“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”* ― François Rabelais

You didn't notice when it happened,
but with age death has found you out
and stalks you like a mad cassowary.

Wherever you look it looks back.

You think of your mother,
slobbering, shrunken, demented,
dead long before she knew it;
the father you haven't spoken
to in years, alone in a nursing home,
rotting and uncomprehending.

You recall the perfect ******* of
the wonderous first girl you loved,
become an old woman, then immolated
by cancer, chemo, radiation,
reduced to a heap of ashes in an urn.

You hear of a friend's son's untimely
passing and though you haven't
seen your friend in 25 years your
spine tingles with sorrow for a full week.

The smashed white cat on the blacktop
you would not have noticed 20 years ago
brings your heart to a full shivering stop;

the wet half fallen leaves sway like
fragile tombstones in the darkened
autumn trees, whispering your name.

          Doom sits upon you shoulder
like a pirate's parrot and sees all
through your eyes.

          You lost your fear of
dying 45 years ago in a forgotten war,
believed it meant nothing, it didn't,

but now the reaper has returned to cast
his chill on everyone and everything
before you.

He scatters his reminders everywhere.

          And you know that once again
you find yourself trapped deep within
the valley of the shadow of death,
alone, but you are no longer the meanest
******* in the valley.

          It's enough
to make you want to believe in a god of mercy,
but it's far too late for divine intervention,
god is dead and mercy is granted to no one.

Soon enough you will stumble into that
final ambush and the bullet with your name
on it that has followed you since birth
will find you and come to rest and the
contract made with your first breath
                     will be fulfilled.

In the end,
                we all look
                                 into the Tiger's eyes.

  ~mce